Ways to set up Virtual Machines on Server 2008R2 if I can't run Hyper V?

I just got several used HP Proliant DL380 G4 servers. It has 2 Intel Xeon 3.6GHz processors.

I've successfully installed Windows server 2008R2 on it I would like to run Virtual Machines on it but the processors do not support Hyper-V. Is there some other reasonable way I can run VM's without using th e Hyper-V feature? Some older VM mechanism from Microsoft that would work?

I'm new to Virtual machines and want to play around with it a little. It doesn't have to go into production right away. I'd like to stay with Server 2008R2 if possible.

You can try either Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 or, as 'evilsi' advised, VMware Server 2.0. On Pg. 25 of the User's Guide, the only pre-requisite (mainly) is that you should install it on a Windows Server OS, which you have :)http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmserver2.pdf

You could use VMWare vConverter to make an ESX image, then put ESX 3.5 on the bare-metal and import the image. That way your 2008 server would run as a VM in ESX and you'd have the full hypervisor to use.

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All the sugestions are accurate. As you a a new user to hypervisors i would suggest VMware server for the following reasons:
1) you already have server 2008 installed - vmware server will install easily on to this and be ready to use within minutes
2)Its easy to get started and you can move your guest VM's around if you like
3) All the networking, file management etc is included in the install

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